Dr_Acula said...
This is great! Does this mean we can run Pacman (ie screenshot on post #1) on a VGA screen as well as TV?
Yes, this is what the whole fuzz was about. I did understand Chip's VGA driver and modified it to do the rather low resolution Nascom display. I think I can do the same for the TRS80, except that I don't yet know how to deal with the 15 scanline font in a synced pair of cogs doing 4 scanlines at a time.
It may be possible, or I have to go with a 6x16 font for the Trash80
"Update3: YEAH! I got it working now. 768x512 centered in a 800x600 display with black borders, close to perfect pixels, i.e. no colour seams on the borders. This thing cost me 2 days of headaches and curses (no, not ncurses [noparse];)[/noparse]"
Is this using an 80 MHz system clock?
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The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Still on 5MHz * 16, with a 2GB Sandisk (FAT16) and tonight the directories seem to work perfectly. Last night I was probably rushing things. I even tried a DIR off of a DIR and all seems to work. I will see if I can adjust things to do an automatic run from the right address after loading as the (G)enerate command did (I think). Certainly the NAS_DOS allowed it.
Pullmoll, at the risk of forcing you to reach for a bucket, I want to thank you again, and again. I have been wanting to get a Nascom up and running again for about 6 years now, none of my simple Z80 attempts seemed to work even in serial terminal mode.
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Style and grace : Nil point
@K2: Yes, the timing of the VGA is calculated for 80 MHz only. You will have to try yourself to find parameters that make the vga.spin object work with a different Propeller clock. If you do find a working set, you could post it here so that I can include it in an auto-setup, just like the TV code does it.
@Toby: You're welcome. You may want to try the next version to see if all directory issues are gone now. For me a root dir without *.NAS files works. I have some other files there and 3 directories. The NAS directory then contains my *.NAS files.
If a NAS file contained the start address, I could autostart it, but the available files are just the data.
I think that all the Generate method did was to plant an ASCII string of characters onto the end of the tape stream, this gave the appearance of the commands being typed in by the user. I will have to look into the way that the DOS did it. I'll have a crack at it tomorrow.
When I modified the Dos code so that a 3.5" DS floppy could give all of it's 160KB, I was the local hero.
30 years ago now, Hey-Ho.
Addit
Potatohead, in posting the fact that you deleated one, just put another one up. This is bordering on the vindictive!
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Style and grace : Nil point
Nascom working on a VGA display in gorgeous yellow on blue!
Steps:
1) Grab the spin files from page 1, post 1
2) put them all in a common directory (I must work out how to get BST to point to sub directories)
3) Makes sure the keyboard spin code is the latest one (there are two in the package)
4) Put BST in the working directory
5) Run BST and browse to the current directory (BST remembers the previous directory, even if it is a new copy of BST - it must be reading an .ini file somewhere)
6) Format an sd card with FAT16 (I tried FAT32 but it just hung). I used a 1GB sanddisk brand
7) Put all the files in the ROM directory on the sd card
8) Put all the files in the NAS directory on the sd card
9) Press F11 in BST to download and compile
10) Wait till the menu comes up. Choose a program to run
11) At the NAS-SYS 1 prompt, type E1000 then Return (this is almost as obscure as the A> prompt in CP/M. Or the flashing cursor in The Matrix)
12) Run the program
See attached screen shots. There are lots more games.
Issues:
1) On space invaders Up arrow moves right and right arrow is Fire. I think these might need to be swapped.
2) On the menu it seems to miss some keyboard entries with the up and down arrows. Is there a keyboard buffer?
3) Do these games have Sound? If so, I'd like to think about a new board with audio output.
I know we talked about audio last week. Not all computers can do audio. AY-3-8910 sounds intriguing. The N8VEM group today have released a board with a real AY-3-8910 chip. I guess that means a software implementation has to follow ?? Hmm - I just found some bands on Youtube that play Ay-3-8910 music. Songs like "8 bits is enough". I presume we have a free cog? Anyway, I digress. Re audio, see www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/prop/PropDemoDschem.pdf I'm thinking about just mono, and use the 10k and 10nf and 1uf (bipolar/polyester?) circuit. With TV there are 4 spare pins. With VGA, no spare pins. I can think of two alternatives:
1) Use VGA green on black and use either the red or blue pin
2) Use P28 which currently goes to the clock line of the eeprom. The eeprom is not used for anything after the board has booted up. The only strange thing there would be brief noises on bootup and on reprogramming. The advantage though is that if color ever happens on VGA the audio would still work.
Here's my list of setup
1) Download the zip file and unzip with subdirectories ./lib and ./nascom
2) Edit the BST compiler preferences to include the lib path (e.g. /home/yourname/prop/lib or C:\Propeller\lib)
3) Point to the nascom directory and select nascom.spin
4) Hit F10 to compile to RAM, F11 to write the EEPROM
for the rest see Dr_Acula's post.
I have to try out FAT32, as it is supposed to work - and did work once.
Specifying the E1000 (in most cases, there are some files loading to other addresses) is necessary because the *NAS files do not contain a run address. I could change the loader to detect a final Exxxx in the NAS file and automagically run from there. Editing the NAS files is no problem. They're plain ASCII hex dumps.
For the sound output I'm generally using pin 24 on the DracBlade, as no emulation so far needs two serial ports. I think it wouldn't hurt to put a resistor and capacitor on this pin and alternatively use it for sound instead of as SIO output. When running MP/M you would have to shut off sound, or listen to the beat of the console #2.
Dr_Acula said...
Ok, so with your sound are you using a 10k and 10nf. With a 1uF blocking cap or not?
Yes, you probably would not use sound and a second port at the same time. I should have enough room for that on the board.
I use nothing at all and trust my amplifier's input to have the parts it needs. I'm overdriving it with the 3.3V, but it does take this without a gripe. I guess ideally you would divide the output voltage so that you get 1Vss max. so perhaps a 22k and 10k in series to ground and the capacitor between the resistors, plus to the Rs, minus going to the output!?
Spare pins can be got from the 4 pin VGA setup, it just means that the "pallete choises" will have to be predefined by the PCB or via jumpers, rather than by software. I don't think many of the Nascom games came with sound as it was never a feature of the N1 or N2, you had to buy and somehow house an expansion board to get things like "Hi res grapics", colour or sound. When these boards were coming out the new raft of machines were coming out that had it all built in already (and that money was used up buying a couple Ks of SRAM)
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Style and grace : Nil point
I see what you mean about the keys from that photo. Yes, if you were playing Space Invaters, on that keyboard the two keys with the left hand would go left and right, and the right hand would do the fire button.
If the nascom didn't have much sound, what about the TRS80?
Is there any spare hub ram left over anywhere in the qZ80? (I'm thinking about a very minimalist color palette)
Dr_Acula said...
I see what you mean about the keys from that photo. Yes, if you were playing Space Invaters, on that keyboard the two keys with the left hand would go left and right, and the right hand would do the fire button.
If the nascom didn't have much sound, what about the TRS80?
Is there any spare hub ram left over anywhere in the qZ80? (I'm thinking about a very minimalist color palette)
There is actually a palette for the row colors, which isn't really needed, because both, TRS80 and Nascom were monochrome.
The TRS80 has sound implemented. It is output on pin 24 of the propeller.
The Colour Genie, which I'm going to try next, will use a colour palette of 16 entries. I'm already trying to make the VGA object look up such a palette for every character. Seems to work basically, because the width (40 with max. 48 visible by reprogramming the 6845 CRTC) is small enough to leave room for character generator longs and colour longs in the cog.
Well, we have done a mid 1970s operating system and moved up to the early 80s. This was a time when memory and CPU speed and graphics were evolving incredibly quickly, and I think colour was the next thing to happen. Colour Genie is about 1983.
Ok, one year at a time, what computers can fit on the Propeller chip?
Colour Genie should take us from Pacman to Donkey Kong. This is going to be fun!
Well, we have done a mid 1970s operating system and moved up to the early 80s. This was a time when memory and CPU speed and graphics were evolving incredibly quickly, and I think colour was the next thing to happen. Colour Genie is about 1983.
Ok, one year at a time, what computers can fit on the Propeller chip?
Colour Genie should take us from Pacman to Donkey Kong. This is going to be fun!
Actually it's going to be tough to emulate this. It has a) colours and b) font RAM and both would need special handling. There is hardly enough space left in qz80 to handle the memory writes alone, not to speak of the bit reversal that's needed for the font data...
And then the video memory was configurable to start anywhere in the first 16KB of RAM. I simply have no 16KB hub RAM, so I will have to try and trick it to always follow the configured screen base address with a 1K window into the RAM, swapping in and out to XMM.
The font consists of 256 characters, where the upper 128 could alternatively be user defined in two halves: $80-$bf and $c0-$ff. The VGA cog does handle this, but it's too late for bit reversing there, so this has to be done at write and undone at read. Tight... too tight.
I don't think there are really any rules about ports. Maybe just don't use ones which the SIMH uses? If there are any clashes then it would be easy to change later.
So - you have a sound emulation now? This is really quite exciting!
Updated the keyboard driver to detect Ctrl+Alt+Delete and reset the Propeller.
There is no sound yet. Does anyone have any preference for how to connect the AY-3-891x to the Nascom?
That was always done via expansion boards, via the NasBus or the PIO. I'll have a look to see how they did it. I only used bit banging on the KBD port.
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Why did I think a new, more challenging, job was a good idea ??
Comments
Yes, this is what the whole fuzz was about. I did understand Chip's VGA driver and modified it to do the rather low resolution Nascom display. I think I can do the same for the TRS80, except that I don't yet know how to deal with the 15 scanline font in a synced pair of cogs doing 4 scanlines at a time.
It may be possible, or I have to go with a 6x16 font for the Trash80
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
Post Edited (pullmoll) : 5/3/2010 2:49:36 AM GMT
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Is this using an 80 MHz system clock?
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The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
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Style and grace : Nil point
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
·
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Propeller Wiki: Share the coolness!
8x8 color 80 Column NTSC Text Object
Safety Tip: Life is as good as YOU think it is!
Pullmoll, at the risk of forcing you to reach for a bucket, I want to thank you again, and again. I have been wanting to get a Nascom up and running again for about 6 years now, none of my simple Z80 attempts seemed to work even in serial terminal mode.
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Style and grace : Nil point
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
·
As for double posting, I felt guilty for invoking the bashing up of the little guy, then you put double guilt in front of me !
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Style and grace : Nil point
Well, I did delete one, so we are back to the baseline bashing. Besides, he's the one taunting the happy fun ball. Will he ever learn?
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Propeller Wiki: Share the coolness!
8x8 color 80 Column NTSC Text Object
Safety Tip: Life is as good as YOU think it is!
@Toby: You're welcome. You may want to try the next version to see if all directory issues are gone now. For me a root dir without *.NAS files works. I have some other files there and 3 directories. The NAS directory then contains my *.NAS files.
If a NAS file contained the start address, I could autostart it, but the available files are just the data.
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
When I modified the Dos code so that a 3.5" DS floppy could give all of it's 160KB, I was the local hero.
30 years ago now, Hey-Ho.
Addit
Potatohead, in posting the fact that you deleated one, just put another one up. This is bordering on the vindictive!
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Style and grace : Nil point
Steps:
1) Grab the spin files from page 1, post 1
2) put them all in a common directory (I must work out how to get BST to point to sub directories)
3) Makes sure the keyboard spin code is the latest one (there are two in the package)
4) Put BST in the working directory
5) Run BST and browse to the current directory (BST remembers the previous directory, even if it is a new copy of BST - it must be reading an .ini file somewhere)
6) Format an sd card with FAT16 (I tried FAT32 but it just hung). I used a 1GB sanddisk brand
7) Put all the files in the ROM directory on the sd card
8) Put all the files in the NAS directory on the sd card
9) Press F11 in BST to download and compile
10) Wait till the menu comes up. Choose a program to run
11) At the NAS-SYS 1 prompt, type E1000 then Return (this is almost as obscure as the A> prompt in CP/M. Or the flashing cursor in The Matrix)
12) Run the program
See attached screen shots. There are lots more games.
Issues:
1) On space invaders Up arrow moves right and right arrow is Fire. I think these might need to be swapped.
2) On the menu it seems to miss some keyboard entries with the up and down arrows. Is there a keyboard buffer?
3) Do these games have Sound? If so, I'd like to think about a new board with audio output.
I know we talked about audio last week. Not all computers can do audio. AY-3-8910 sounds intriguing. The N8VEM group today have released a board with a real AY-3-8910 chip. I guess that means a software implementation has to follow ?? Hmm - I just found some bands on Youtube that play Ay-3-8910 music. Songs like "8 bits is enough". I presume we have a free cog? Anyway, I digress. Re audio, see www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/prop/PropDemoDschem.pdf I'm thinking about just mono, and use the 10k and 10nf and 1uf (bipolar/polyester?) circuit. With TV there are 4 spare pins. With VGA, no spare pins. I can think of two alternatives:
1) Use VGA green on black and use either the red or blue pin
2) Use P28 which currently goes to the clock line of the eeprom. The eeprom is not used for anything after the board has booted up. The only strange thing there would be brief noises on bootup and on reprogramming. The advantage though is that if color ever happens on VGA the audio would still work.
Thoughts?
This is great fun. Top marks to Pullmoll!!!
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 5/4/2010 2:06:05 AM GMT
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
1) Download the zip file and unzip with subdirectories ./lib and ./nascom
2) Edit the BST compiler preferences to include the lib path (e.g. /home/yourname/prop/lib or C:\Propeller\lib)
3) Point to the nascom directory and select nascom.spin
4) Hit F10 to compile to RAM, F11 to write the EEPROM
for the rest see Dr_Acula's post.
I have to try out FAT32, as it is supposed to work - and did work once.
The keyboard is correct as it is, but the PC's cursor keys are very different from the Nascom's. See http://www.nascomhomepage.com/pics/NASKBD.JPG
Specifying the E1000 (in most cases, there are some files loading to other addresses) is necessary because the *NAS files do not contain a run address. I could change the loader to detect a final Exxxx in the NAS file and automagically run from there. Editing the NAS files is no problem. They're plain ASCII hex dumps.
For the sound output I'm generally using pin 24 on the DracBlade, as no emulation so far needs two serial ports. I think it wouldn't hurt to put a resistor and capacitor on this pin and alternatively use it for sound instead of as SIO output. When running MP/M you would have to shut off sound, or listen to the beat of the console #2.
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
Post Edited (pullmoll) : 5/4/2010 3:20:49 AM GMT
Yes, you probably would not use sound and a second port at the same time. I should have enough room for that on the board.
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
I use nothing at all and trust my amplifier's input to have the parts it needs. I'm overdriving it with the 3.3V, but it does take this without a gripe. I guess ideally you would divide the output voltage so that you get 1Vss max. so perhaps a 22k and 10k in series to ground and the capacitor between the resistors, plus to the Rs, minus going to the output!?
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
Spare pins can be got from the 4 pin VGA setup, it just means that the "pallete choises" will have to be predefined by the PCB or via jumpers, rather than by software. I don't think many of the Nascom games came with sound as it was never a feature of the N1 or N2, you had to buy and somehow house an expansion board to get things like "Hi res grapics", colour or sound. When these boards were coming out the new raft of machines were coming out that had it all built in already (and that money was used up buying a couple Ks of SRAM)
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Style and grace : Nil point
If the nascom didn't have much sound, what about the TRS80?
Is there any spare hub ram left over anywhere in the qZ80? (I'm thinking about a very minimalist color palette)
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
There is actually a palette for the row colors, which isn't really needed, because both, TRS80 and Nascom were monochrome.
The TRS80 has sound implemented. It is output on pin 24 of the propeller.
The Colour Genie, which I'm going to try next, will use a colour palette of 16 entries. I'm already trying to make the VGA object look up such a palette for every character. Seems to work basically, because the width (40 with max. 48 visible by reprogramming the 6845 CRTC) is small enough to leave room for character generator longs and colour longs in the cog.
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
Well, we have done a mid 1970s operating system and moved up to the early 80s. This was a time when memory and CPU speed and graphics were evolving incredibly quickly, and I think colour was the next thing to happen. Colour Genie is about 1983.
Ok, one year at a time, what computers can fit on the Propeller chip?
Colour Genie should take us from Pacman to Donkey Kong. This is going to be fun!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Actually it's going to be tough to emulate this. It has a) colours and b) font RAM and both would need special handling. There is hardly enough space left in qz80 to handle the memory writes alone, not to speak of the bit reversal that's needed for the font data...
And then the video memory was configurable to start anywhere in the first 16KB of RAM. I simply have no 16KB hub RAM, so I will have to try and trick it to always follow the configured screen base address with a 1K window into the RAM, swapping in and out to XMM.
The font consists of 256 characters, where the upper 128 could alternatively be user defined in two halves: $80-$bf and $c0-$ff. The VGA cog does handle this, but it's too late for bit reversing there, so this has to be done at write and undone at read. Tight... too tight.
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
So - you have a sound emulation now? This is really quite exciting!
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
There is no sound yet. Does anyone have any preference for how to connect the AY-3-891x to the Nascom?
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
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Why did I think a new, more challenging, job was a good idea ??